Czech President: "Greece Is Being Punished For Premature Acceptance Of The Euro"

Czech president Vaclav Klaus’s scepticism toward the euro is looking good right now.The economist-president said in an interview with Caixin his country would avoid a Greek or Irish crisis because it has control over the currency:

The euro is not the Czech Republic’s currency. We still have the Czech koruna. The Czech koruna would have signaled the problem years before the crisis, whereas Greece and lots of others in the euro system didn’t get such warning signals about problems. So this is really a problem of the euro zone. Without the euro, the Greeks would have fought problems with exchange rates, interest rates, monetary policy, and Greece would not have had such problems. Greece is being punished for premature acceptance of the euro.

Although Czech Republic agreed when it joined the EU to adopt the euro eventually, it didn’t say when:

The Czech Republic signed the EU accession treaty seven years ago. One item was that we would be part of the euro zone; there was no choice. But it’s important that we signed it without giving a date. So we can join in the year 2017 or 2057 or 3011. By then, the euro may not exist.

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